


in a clock factory or abattoir

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-07 19:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Sit down,” Mrs. Egbert says. Shockalots shuffles away; apparently he has to answer a page. “I wanted to apologize for stealing your tall calculator.”</p>
<p>“It’s called a laptop,” Roxy says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in a clock factory or abattoir

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whilst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whilst/gifts).



When Roxy wakes up, there is an old woman bent over her laptop going, “hoo, hoo, hoo.” Seriously? Crying because a hot chick popped her son’s virginity? She looks over at Todd Meecham, still snoozing on the couch and squints. The crying woman and Todd look nothing alike—Todd’s blond, like newborn baby blond, and has a nose like it’s made from freaking origami paper or whatevs—but moms crying over their kids’ sullied virginity is a Roxy Lalonde signature move, trademark 1983, courtesy of her sweet tits, motherfuckers.

“Hoo hoo,” says the woman. Jesus. Roxy is such a hangover. Has such a hangover. Has such a hangover, will always have such a hangover. She reaches for the wine bottle and presses it against her forehead. Todd’s underpants are still on it. Roxy’s own panties dangle from the corner of her laptop screen.

“Heeeey,” she says. “Hey sexy mamma. Want to pass me my computer?”

“Kindly fetch me my flower,” sexy mamma says. “Hoo. It fell onto your bosom while I was sobbing over the spots of virgin blood on my son’s sheets.”

“This isn’t even Todd’s house,” Roxy protests. “It’s a frat house! And my butt’s got couch spring bruises. Look!”

Sexy momma keeps her head bent. She sniffs. Roxy takes the flower on her boobs. It squirts fucking blood into her face.

“HOO HOO HOO,” says fucking evil old biddy.

***

Roxy Lalonde is twenty years old, still in college, and rocks an IBM ThinkPad 700 so thick it could be cut in half and served at the Quiznos in the basement of her campus cafeteria. Her beautiful, beautiful ThinkPad, full of apocalypse events, has been stolen by vengeful granny who is also no one’s mother, right before finals week. “I’m telling you,” Roxy tells them. “An old lady came in here and stole my computer.”

“Why do you even need a laptop,” says one of the nasally nerds. She can call him a nasally nerd because the frat’s made of nothing but drunk guys peeing into soda bottles in thirty-six hour apocalyptic LARPing sessions that end with everyone pretending the end of the world has plenty of pot farms. “You’re an astronomy major.”

“Shut your mouth,” Roxy says. “I’m telling you, she’s a thing.”

“That’s not even blood,” says nasal nerd two. “It’s Jell-O.”

“Fucking ass shit weasels,” she says. “Dicks made with, I dunno, vas deferens.” She squirts the flower a few times sadly. The rubber smells like cherry and fake sugar, but beneath it she can smell the bleeding rubber tree, leaking sap… wait a second. It still has the price tag: $6.99, Japes and Cakes, Seattle, Wash. Christ. Who drops seven bucks on a squirting flower?

“That’s mine,” someone says. It’s dude—big surprise—in a fedora and a pipe. He has a tie to go with his t-shirt. His t-shirt’s tucked into a pair of chinos. He’s wearing very shiny shoes.

“’kay, you even go here?” she says. She looks at him, carefully. He looks like an ordinary guy: young. Possibly balding. Probably related to evil granny. “Where’s your mom?” He offers her his hand. When she grasps it, it shocks her twice. “Fuuuuuckkkk,” she says.

***

“My mom’s interested in you,” says mysterious hat man. They are standing in front of a kitchen in a hotel room; according to Sir Shockalots Egbert, his mom wants to bake the perfect cake for Roxy. “She likes that paper you wrote.”

“What paper?” Roxy says.

He shrugs and gestures vaguely at the ceiling.

“Crap.” She sure did bullshit a lot of astronomy over the last few years. She reaches for her hipflask and chugs. Mr. Egbert doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even seem like he notices. He’s pumping the flower pump on his chest, bringing his nose to it and sniffing sometimes. Jesus. What’s going to come out this time? Boob milk?

“You know,” he says. “I like computers, too. And asteroids.”

“Cool,” she says. She reaches over to the flower and gives it a nice, hard squeeze. It shocks her again. “Augh!”

“Dearie, let the poor girl in.” The door to the kitchen opens. Egbert lets her go in first; she moves cautiously, in case there is a trip wire. There is nothing like that: there is just Mrs. Egbert in an apron. It’s a creepy apron, too, with a whole shit ton of laughing lips and teeth printed on it like really ugly flowers. Mrs. Egbert is holding a cake. “Sit down,” Mrs. Egbert says. Shockalots shuffles away; apparently he has to answer a page. “I wanted to apologize for stealing your tall calculator.”

“It’s called a laptop,” Roxy says. She pats the chair in case there’s a whoopie cushion. Nope. Nothing. Clear. She sniffs the cake slice Mrs. Egbert’s given her: it’s rich chocolate cake with three layers and frosted with old-Renaissance-Dutch-dude-painter skill and doesn’t smell like it’s secretly made with chili peppers. She whistles and takes a bite.

“You have quite an adventuring spirit!” Mrs. Egbert, Cakemeister, says. “I looked at your files. So many doomsday predictions about space! Something to drink, dearie?”

“’kay.”

“And so the young maiden accepted the fiendish baker’s offer…”

“What?”

“Hoo hoo!”

Roxy looks at the cake. It seems to stare back at her, daring: take another bite. Take it. She does. Nothing happens. She licks the spoon tentatively.

“I’m getting older now,” says Mrs. Egbert. “But I will always remember what I wished for when I was but a girl. Adventure! But stability, too. You, dear, are pure adventure. But have you ever considered motherhood?”

“Is this an intervention?” Roxy says. “Because, just to let you know, my computer’s my baby.”

“Yes. But there will be other babies in your future. The cake doesn’t lie.”

“Okay, lady,” she says, and takes another bite of cake. Huh. That’s weird. She doesn’t think the world’s supposed to get all… dying CRT monitor on her. Leaky LCDs. If the cake was spiked, it was definitely not spiked with alcohol.

“I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting for you, Roxy,” Mrs. Egbert says. “To think, it will be just you and Dirk and me…! There are so many things…”

And she goes on, in an old lady kind of way: asteroids! The end of the world! Her step-mother and her brother and some other asteroids. World War II and x-rays revealing her stepmother’s true self. Around then, Mrs. Egbert’s words stop being so nonsense. Roxy, stretched out in an endless, whirling bakery of rainbow cakes, can believe sincerely: aliens walk the Earth; Earth is doomed; her baby is going to arrive on a flaming rock while wearing a wizard hat and with a full fucking blown beard. What is the point of life, if not to love?

But then the trip turns nasty: she has a vision of a chess board, a dog with a sword in its gut, her sudden and unavoidable death.

***

You would think that eventually a person could run out of ways to wake up with a hangover, but Roxy is forever inventive: this time she wakes up in the hotel lobby wearing a clown suit and a raging headache. Goddamn! What was with that family? And who makes silk clown suits? Really? What the fuck.

She shivers, cold. Turns out evil grandma is also mean prankster demon grandma. At least she still has her wallet and all her clothes, and a sweet new clown suit. She bets it’ll make a great story. And she still has her computer. When she tries to get off the couch the Egberts have thrown her over, she almost falls over because of how huge the shoes are. She’s wearing two shoes! Come on. Clown overkill. She kicks the shoes off, then the dumb rubber nose, then the suit. There’s an address on the page—an offering, a challenge, or some weird supervillain calling sign?

She feels as though she’s known Mrs. Egbert forever, in some other life that both begins before hers and begins after. And she feels as though she’s let Mrs. Egbert down. Memories of the night before are surfacing: at some point she gave Mrs. Egbert a hug and a really bad kiss. Mrs. Egbert pats her fondly on the cheek but turns her away, as though Roxy has done this before, and has been found wanting.


End file.
